How to Improve Your Website – Make Your Website or Blog an Asset for Your Business: Books That Make You Smarter
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About this ebook
You have a website or blog – great! You are a blogger or own a small business owner. Once your site has been set up, how will people find you? What are visitors looking for when they visit your site? How do you fix your site if something looks off?
The answers are easier than you think.
In "How to Improve Your Website," you'll move through a series of 15 straightforward lessons at the perfect level for your understanding. Whether you are a blogger or a business owner trying to share their passion with the world, this book will teach you:
- How to make it easier to be found on the internet
- How to improve the user experience on your website or blog
- How to create content that visitors want
- How to keep your website safe and secure
- What are Followers & Subscribers and how to get some
Most importantly, you will improve your level of comfort managing your website/blog.
Whether you are just starting out with a website/blog or you have been blogging for a while, this book will help you understand how to improve your website/blog and make it a true asset for your business. As the title suggests, this book will help make you smarter.
Managing your website doesn't have to be scary!
Pick up this book and start improving your site today!
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How to Improve Your Website – Make Your Website or Blog an Asset for Your Business - Barb Drozdowich
Introduction
A website—certainly at the beginning—is frequently something a blogger or small business owner creates by themselves. Whether trying to operate within a tight budget or unwilling to spend money until they really start making money, many are convinced that putting together a website is something they can do themselves. Their friends tell them it is easy
and they do their best—but they aren’t technically skilled and they don’t really know what they are doing, so they struggle to create something that doesn’t look like a toddler put it together.
Does the above paragraph seem overly harsh?
Does this describe you?
Hi there. I’m Barb Drozdowich, an author and a technical virtual assistant. Over the years I have worked with many authors and small business owners. I know that the above paragraph is true more often than not, and it likely does describe you, as you picked up this book probably looking for help.
Let me explain who I am and why I am the best person to teach you all about your website.
I started my teaching career in 1986—primarily teaching science and applied science at the college and university level. When I moved across the country in 1995 I found a new job running the technical training department of a bank. Both experiences made me really good at breaking down and explaining complicated subjects.
When I left my day job to start raising a family, I began looking around for something to keep my mind going: an intellectual challenge, a technical challenge. A friend suggested I start a blog. I did a bit of investigation, asked for help from a computer-programming student, and was off and blogging. I experimented with a few blogs and in 2010 I started a book blog that kept my interest. I’ve always been a voracious reader and book blogging allowed me to combine my love of reading with my need for a technical challenge. If only my high school English teachers could see me now…
Although I struggled a bit at the beginning, my technical background helped me learn the world of blogs and websites quite quickly. It wasn’t long before I was helping my online friends fix
their blogs. This started another career as a virtual assistant focusing on technical tasks and I never did go back to my day job. Now I work from home, primarily serving as a technical trainer and technical assistant to authors and small business owners.
So, what does this mean for you? It means that I teach various technical tasks. It means that I serve as a technical virtual assistant. It also means that I am responsible (to one extent or another) for maintaining about 75 different websites. These websites are a mixture of author websites and small business websites. This quantity of different websites (as well as their mostly beginner owners) gives me a wide variety of real-life examples.
Because of my experience, my technical bent, as well as my exposure to a large amount of real information about the internet world, I look at the technical world differently than most people I know.
This book is entitled "How to Improve Your Website." I plan to help you learn about websites from the perspective of the needs of a blogger or small business owner and plan to do so in 15 short lessons of focused work. In my mind, the needs of a blogger or a small business owner are different from the needs of larger businesses. I’m going to have you look at your own site in a critical fashion.
This book is aimed at someone who already has a functioning website or blog, but if you don’t have a website yet, you can do some of the exercises looking at a friend’s website and planning for your own in the future.
As much as possible, the content of this book will apply to all types of websites. Where there is the need for me to be specific, I will give as many examples as possible.
Let’s be clear about a few details. In 2020, anyone selling something needs a presence on the Internet. We can call that presence a website or we can call that presence a blog. As we’ll learn, the word website and blog are often used interchangeably.
There are many differences in the world of bloggers and small businesses from the world of large businesses or brands. Many of your audience will reach you via a Google search, but just as many will find you through some version of word of mouth.
That word of mouth
may be customers from your brick-and-mortar location finding your website when they get home from a visit in person. However, many will find you via social media.
A question I frequently receive is—"Why do I need a website/blog when a Facebook or Instagram page will do just fine? The short answer is you want a presence on the Internet on real estate you own. The longer answer is that since it is the year 2020 and for the sake of validity you need a searchable location on the Internet. Having a website gives you credibility. Having a Facebook page might be part of your social media platform, but it doesn’t lend the same credence as a website or blog does—and you don’t own your presence on Facebook.
Back to the idea of real estate you own, you want a place to store information about you and your products/business that won’t disappear if the platform it is on disappears.
Most of the clients I work with would rather be doing anything but fussing with their website. They have specific interests they want to share and really have no interest in becoming a web specialist.
Most of the authors I work with would rather be writing their next book and most of the small business owners I work with would rather be dealing with their money maker
which certainly at the beginning, is their business. As a voracious reader, I’m very happy that authors are consumed with the idea of writing more books! But as a technical trainer, I focus on quick and efficient ways to manage technical tasks. I focus on putting non-technical people in control of the boat rather than the boat in control of the owner.
The other thing you’ll figure out quite quickly is that I don’t feel most bloggers and small businesses need an overly complicated website. They simply need a place on the Internet to share information about their interests or business. However, that place should be professional looking and should work for the owner (not the reverse). I have preferences, as you’ll see as we work our way through the material in this book, but I don’t feel that a website so complicated that the owner can’t manage it (if she chooses) is necessary. Those fancy websites that cost thousands of dollars and do everything including folding the laundry are not necessary in my opinion.
If you have a technical bent, I